Wednesday, August 03, 2011

During his era he was one of the best catchers, Johnny Bench being the best and the other two being Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk, and all are in the Hall of Fame except Munson. An argument can be made that during the years Thurman Munson and Fisk played, Munson was a better all around catcher both offensively and defensively. Munson’s lifetime statistics also compare very favorably to Hall of Fame Catcher Roy Campanella whose career was also ended ...

David Laurila: You had a productive a career that looks even better after accounting for era and park factors. Were you underrated?

Ron Fairly: I think everybody feels that maybe they weren’t appreciated as much as they [should have been] for the contributions they made to ball clubs. I think it goes without saying. A lot of players feel that way.

I think my numbers would certainly be better today. I played in an era — the 1960s — that might have been the most ...

A 60-point drop off in batting average, and all of a sudden you’re calling him a fake…huh, oh ####.

The Ichiro Suzuki impersonator at Safeco Field who has been posing for pictures and signing autographs for the past few home games was doing a pretty good job up until Tuesday’s night game against Oakland.

He had it all: the No. 51 jersey, the baseball pants tucked perfectly into his socks at the knee, the slightly bent bill on his Mariners hat, the Asics shoes, the light black beard and even ...

I, by changing into a beast, give the animals here intelligent leadership…AS ONE OF THEM!

Maybe they call it “Beast Mode.” You have seen the Nationals’ first baseman Michael Morse and his now-famous t-shirt during MASN’s Nats Xtra postgame show interviews, haven’t you?

...Guys like Werth, Rick Ankiel, Danny Espinosa, Laynce Nix, Ian Desmond and Morse play baseball not to avoid contact, but to seek it out. This is the kind of team the Nationals are becoming. Pants are ripped up, there is mud ...

Station now closed, I offer to drive her to her East 65th apartment so she’s home safe and suggest she come back for her car later. Once there, I ask to wash up to get the dirt off my hands. She directs me to the bathroom, and while I am drying my hands, her man comes home and I hear Nita explaining the chain of events to him. As I emerge from the bathroom, here is this 6-6, 290-pound guy looking right through me.

NEW YORK, Aug. 3.—Somebody lost his wooden leg at the Broadway exit of the American league baseball park late yesterday. A policeman found it and sent it to headquarters, where it was made the subject of a general order that every policeman in the city shall be on the lookout for the owner.

[Paul Goldschmidt] blasted a two-run homer off Tim Lincecum to lead the D-backs past the Giants, 6-1, on Tuesday night at AT&T Park.

The win was the fourth in a row for the streaking D-backs, who are now tied with the Giants for first place in the National League West. Arizona has won eight of its last 10 while San Francisco has dropped five straight.
...
After popping out in his first at-bat against Lincecum, Goldschmidt, who led the Minor Leagues in homers with 30 at the time of his ...

For better or for worse, TLR, the one-man CIA of the MLB, was up to his usual psychological warfare Tuesday on both the opposition and his own players.

Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols was hit by a high-and-tight pitch. Brewers All-Star Ryan Braun took one in the back a few minutes later. And St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina could face a suspension after making contact in a heated argument with plate umpire Rob Drake.
...
Pujols and Braun each were hit by a pitch in the seventh, and Molina ...

Starting Tuesday, Aug. 2, any Rogers customer can catch live streamed Rogers Sportsnet coverage of every pitch, hit and home run of the remainder of the 2011 Blue Jays regular season games anywhere they want through Rogers On Demand Online and on their smartphones with Rogers On Demand Mobile.

This is basically an advertisement, but does any other team offer free streaming of games to customers in their mlb.tv blackout zone? As a Jays fan, this is awesome.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Unless realignment is a fait accompli, this might put last month’s rumors to rest, as approval would seemingly reduce or eliminate MLB’s leverage over Crane and the Astros ...

Barring an unforeseen hitch, MLB’s owners will be discussing and putting to vote the sale of the Houston Astros to Jim Crane as part of the upcoming quarterly MLB owners meetings set for August 17-18, according to league sources.

The sale has been held up as the league has addressed the bankruptcy of the Los Angeles ...

Proof, that much like The Super-Moby Dick of Space…The Yallof Effect, will indeed consume all in its path!

It’s a far cry from a decade ago, when whip-smart GMs such as Beane and Theo Epstein could pluck undervalued players out from under aging GMs whose generation still cherished flawed measurements such as batting average. Now, Beane found only frustration with the kind of homogenous, risk-averse thinking of the industry.

13. Los Angeles Angels/Kansas City Royals Tony Reagins: Look, I gotta be honest with you, the Vernon Wells trade didn’t work out like we had hoped. Now Bourjos is hurt ... it’s a mess. What are you looking to get in return for Francoeur and Melky?

Dayton Moore: Not for sale!

Tony Reagins: Oh, come on. Just one of them. We have prospects. There’s this 20-year-old kid who was just up. Fast as the wind. Name is Mike Tr ...

Hisashi Iwakuma, one of the top starting pitchers in Japan, has hired a new agent as a prelude to coming to Major League Baseball as a free agent in 2012.

Iwakuma, a star right-hander for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, is expected to rank among the elite starters in a free-agent market that could include CC Sabathia, C.J. Wilson, Mark Buehrle, Japanese countryman Hiroki Kuroda of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Yu Darvish of Japan’s Nippon Ham Fighters. Sabathia can become a free agent if he ...

Hall of Fame officials have also not revealed whether the Young jersey has already been examined by the same textile analysis outfit that determined Halper’s Joe Jackson jersey was bogus.

While Hall of Fame spokesman Brad Horn did not respond to several inquiries made by Haulsofshame.com he did respond to blogger (and Spink award winner) Murray Chass when asked about how many items from the original Halper purchase had been rejected?

As one of my old managers used to say…“If you’re really not good at any sport…try out for football.”

That’s the nature of pro football. At least 95 percent of NFL fans have never seen their favorite team — or any other team — in person. I’m not pulling that figure out of a hat. A couple of years ago George Will, when he served on baseball’s Blue Ribbon Panel, told me they conducted a survey indicating that the number of football fans who only knew the game from their living room sofa was ...

The sixth overall pick in the 2009 draft, Wheeler is a 21-year-old righthander who easily delivers fastball in the mid-90s while also showing the potential for a plus curveball and changeup. Like a lot of young pitchers, he needs better command and consistency, but his upside as a frontline starter is undeniable.

Getting Wheeler was a coup for an organization that hasn’t had much go right in recent years. One player alone doesn’t make a farm ...

Callahan: You know, you’re crazy if you think you’ve heard the last of this guy. He’s gonna suck again.

Bedard is a hard-throwing left-hander with the proverbial good stuff, but when you take a look at the complete package, it’s obvious he belongs in Boston about as much as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie belongs on an Abercrombie & Fitch billboard.

Bedard doesn’t like the media. He doesn’t like crowds. He doesn’t like attention. He doesn’t like day games. Some people wonder if he ...

Call it mind over physiology, a belief in the practices that have brought them to this level, but hitters are just now digesting the news that their time-honored on-deck routines are wrong. Scientific research makes clear that the more weight you swing in the on-deck circle, the slower your swing in the batter’s box. The slower the swing, the harder it is to catch up to searing fastballs and do what’s considered the toughest task in ...

Wuh…Taylor Mountain, Genesee River Gorge, and Gilgo Beach are filled to capacity?

As for Dunn, his struggles continued as he struck out three times against Sabathia to increase his season total to 137.

Dunn did receive plenty of support from Pierzynski and Beckham after the game.

“I love Adam Dunn, on and off the field,” Pierzynski said. “Everyone’s been there. If you’ve ever played this game, you’ve struggled. This is not an easy game to play. It’s not something that you can go out ...

Craig Counsell, pinch-hitting for Greinke, pops out to second to extend his hitless streak to 45 at-bats.

Counsell appears to be one short of the major league record of 46 consecutive hitless at-bats for a position player, held by Bill Bergen. Queries on baseball-reference.com, which run back to 1919, show no longer streak.

Counsell’s last hits came on June 8th, when he went 3-3 against the Cardinals. He has 2 runs scored in his streak, as well as a game-winning RBI on a sacrifice fly. He ...

Rafael Almeida is neither a Cuban or a Spaniard, but a Portuguese. He says that he is not Senor Almeida, but Senhor D’Almeida, of a well-known Lisbon family, exporters of port wines and such good things. What next?

And Tom Grieve, the shortstop who hasn’t shortstopped any yet, is a Scotchman, born in Kiltland, and still carrying a Hieland brogue that would warm the heart of Bobby Burns. Oh, very well. Has anyone seen Nikolaieff Skobeloffskivitch in the ...

Cliff Pennington was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy on Monday, and by the sixth inning, he was having trouble seeing because he couldn’t close his left eye and it kept tearing up. “It feels like I went to the dentist and the whole left side of my face is numb,” he said.

Pennington, who was replaced in the sixth by Eric Sogard, is hopeful that the usually temporary condition, in which a nerve causes facial paralysis, clears up within a day or two. He was put on medication immediately, which is ...

Brought in this winter to be a big bat in the middle of the lineup, Lyle Overbay’s tenure with the Pirates is over prematurely following four months of offensive struggles.

The club designated Overbay for assignment on Monday in order to open up a roster spot for first baseman Derrek Lee, who was acquired in a trade with the Orioles on Saturday. There is a possibility that Overbay could be claimed off waivers by a team that will ask the Pirates to pay a significant portion of the approximately ...

Major League Baseball is approaching an arbitrary but fun milestone: its 200,000th game of all time. Unless it reached that milestone a month ago. Or last October.

The statistical website Baseball-Reference has been counting up to the majors’ 200,000th game. Through Sunday, the tally is 199,254 games, and the site is predicting the milestone will be reached Sept. 24. But there are some uncertainties about the total. Alternate ways of counting lead to the conclusion ...

Monday, August 01, 2011

A key witness in the beating case of Giants fan Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium died suddenly, apparently of an allergic food reaction.

According to law enforcement sources familiar with the case, Matthew Lee died Sunday after eating a salad that apparently contained nuts, which caused the allergic reaction. The coroner has not determined a cause of death, however.

Stow and Lee went to the Dodgers’ home opener together with a group of friends.

When Jered Weaver threw at Alexi Avila’s head, the purpose pitch missed by a long shot. Even though Weaver could have hit him, his job is to precisely locate the ball and he did so here - far from doing any damage. But you never know. And that is the terror of the billy club. And you don’t find out about that terror if you stay within the lines of playing the game in a respectful manner. It was a chilling reminder to all that the pitcher is a force of nature on the mound. He literally can kill ...

...Beyond the inability to expand, let me briefly comment on a proposal that I think is linked to the idea of realignment. There is also a movement to expand baseball’s playoffs to five teams in each league. So if 15 teams play in each league, 33% of the each league would be in the post-season if the playoffs are expanded.